Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Most Meritorious Player: 1905 Ballot

For 1905, each voter should rank the top 10 players from all leagues combined.

Balloting is scheduled to close at 4pm EDT on 3 June 2015.

Anyone can vote, even if you do not normally participate in Hall of Merit discussions. If have never participated in an MMP election, just post a preliminary ballot in the discussion thread by 2 June 2015.

Reader Comments and Retorts

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1) Honus Wagner - fifth year in a row in my top 3, good fielding year for Wagner
2) Christy Mathewson - 3 shutouts in World Series
3) Cy Seymour - best bat of 1905
4) Mike Donlin - several good CF in 1905
5) Roy Thomas - defense closes gap between Donlin and Thomas
6) Elmer Flick
7) Rube Waddell - No bonus for injuring himself during a stupid fight while in a pennant race
8) Rube Foster - Not as much bat in 1905 but still a very good pitcher
9) Pete Hill - first great season from Hill
10) Frank Chance - better rate stats than Titus breaks the tie. No managerial credit though it was impressive

1) Honus Wagner: Best ML player and shortstop.
2) Cy Seymour: Best ML center fielder - surprisingly, not that far off from The Flying Dutchman.
3) Christy Mathewson: Best ML pitcher by a comfortable amount.
4) Ed Reulbach
5) Mike Donlin
6) Rube Waddell: Best AL pitcher.
7) Roy Thomas
8) Rube Foster: Best NeL player and pitcher.
9) Frank Chance: Best ML first baseman - wasn't on my prelim (John Titus was knocked off for him here).
10) Eddie Plank: It appears the AL could challenge the NL with quality pitching, but less so with the position players.

Here’s Brock Hanke’s MMP ballot for 1905. This time, I found no reason to disagree with my starting list of players organized by the ordinals they aquired in Win Shares and WAR. I thought Christy Mathewson might be a problem, because of the World Series, but he wasn’t. Nothing I’m willing to do would put him ahead of Honus, and the ordinals rank him #2. He’s third in WS, second in WAR. Honus is first in both. WS has Cy Seymour second and WAR has him fourth, but he’s real close to Matty in WS and not close in WAR. There was one tie in the ordinals, sixth place, Ed Killian and Ed Reulbach. I gave the nod to Reulbach because WS and WAR are in absolute consensus about him, which inspires a little extra trust.

The best NL pitcher and position player are on the list, as is the best AL pitcher. But the best AL position player, George Davis, ended up 11th. Not only that, but he’s ranked right below the #10 guy, Eddie Plank, in both systems. So I have to mention him here.

Looking at BB-Ref to identify the best position player in the AL, I really came to grips with just how bad a hitting environment 1905 really was. Elmer Flick hit .308; that led the league. Harry Davis scored 93 Runs, drove in 83 RBI, and hit 8 Homers. All three totals led the league. Flick is actually tied with George Davis for best hitter, at 5.5 WAR. Davis hit .278, with one homer and one triple all year. Davis’ raw stats are not nearly as good as Flick’s, so I assume that the ballpark in Chicago was much worse for hitters than the one in Cleveland. Also, Davis played 19 more games than Flick. Davis is the best position player because he’s tied with Lee Tannehill as the best defensive player in the league. Tied for best hitter, tied for best fielder, you’re the best position player in the league.

This explains a little of why I’m not thrilled with Matty’s three shutouts in the World Series. 1905 just didn’t feature many runs. Someone hit .278, with no power, and was tied for the best hitter in the AL. The AL was the weaker league overall. In that environment, you’d expect the best pitcher in the stronger league to throw some shutouts in there.

One other note: In 1905 here, Sam Crawford tied for the third-best AL hitter – with Bobby Wallace. That might explain some of why Wallace gets into Halls. There are years where his raw stats don’t look like much, but he ends up high in the rankings as a HITTER. When that happens and you’re best known for your glove, well, sportswriters remember you.

Here’s an important thing if you’re trying to visualize baseball at this time: In the defensive WAR rankings, only one outfielder is in the top 24 defensive players (Fielder Jones, earning his nickname). There are only two outfielders in the top 33. Three OF in the top 48. In other words, this game was completely dominated by ground balls and bunts. No outfielder could get enough chances to do really well. If you look at pitchers from this era, they divide into two groups: A small group of guys who threw really really hard (Young, Waddell, later Johnson), and a much larger gang of curve ball artists. Curves lead to ground balls.

So, enough with my nattering on, here’s the list, without comments, for ease of tabluation:

I use a combination of WAR systems to get an average WAR for each player. I use that number to get a Dan R-style peak-rate salary estimation. I divide that salary by $1 million and add 3 times the average WAR to that dividend. I use a 20% bonus for catchers and do not credit postseason except as a tiebreaker.

DL - Yes, I did think about Hill and Foster. However, I am very conservative about comparing black players of this time to white players, largely because the caliber of Negro League competition was very low, especially in non-league games, and there were very few league games. However, I am also cautious about one-year big seasons, like Pete Hill this year, because the sample size of LEAGUE games is so small. It's kind of my Pop Lloyd Rule. I love Pop Lloyd, and think he has a case as the best position player in the Negro Leagues, although Josh Gibson and Oscar Charleston fans will have realistic objections to that. I also think that Lloyd was probably the second-best shortstop of all time, behind only Honus. But Pop hit well over .500 in a Negro League season of about 30 games, decades later, when the leagues were much better organized and Pop was over 40. To me, this is just a hot streak without enough more schedule to smooth it out. I'm hesitant about placing that in a MMP ballot, and all the top Negro League seasons look like that, because the schedule was so small. Also, look at the MLB rankings. There are so many pitchers at the top. I have no doubt that this was true in the Negro Leagues, which makes me extra queasy about seasons like Hill's, because he was an outfielder. Now, if Hill follows up with similar seasons, which he will, I will start to rank him, just as I rank George Wright, Joe Start and Ross Barnes from the National Association. Those guys were top position players year after year, including when the schedules got over 40 games. There's enough cumulative sample size to take seriously. I would then think that a great Pete Hill season was what it looks like, because it's just one more great season in a string that has enough sample size to be more sure. My personal opinion is that, at this time, Rube Foster probably dominated Negro League ball very seriously, so I do rank him. But this was an off year for Foster. It's hard to get me to rank anyone else. That's not because I don't think there were any black players who played at a MLB level at the time. It's mostly because I can't be sure WHICH of the black players were the real goods, and which had a hot streak season. I expect to start ranking Hill in the Top Ten about 1907, when the sample size gets large enough. I'll also note that Hill, if the numbers I saw are accurate, was possibly the largest man in the Negro Leagues at this time, certainly one of the largest. The idea that he was the dominant power hitter of this time is certainly possible. But I do want a little more than the first breakout season before I start getting serious. I am aware that John McGraw tried to pass off Charlie (?, maybe Frank) Grant as a Latin guy, to add him to the Giants, I think in 1906. So I am aware that WHITE MLB guys thought that the best Negro Leaguers could play in MLB. But the MLB teams of the time were playing 140+ league games a year, which gives them a huge head start in confidence regarding their stats. Does that make sense? - Brock

BTW, the BTF Newsstand, at the time I'm writing this, has a post containing a small speech by George Wright on the origins of baseball. It's EXCEPTIONAL. It gives you a VERY good idea of how and when what we now call "baseball" came into being. If it's not on the Newsstand when you read this, click on "more" and scroll down until you see it. Really great. - Brock

Thank you for the extension, my computer with my data on it crashed. Thus, this is copied from the discussion thread. I didn't see anything that would have changed my ballot, although thinking about Rube Foster gets him a little closer than I initially gave him credit for. Nonetheless, he misses out, and here is my final ballot:

1-Matty: 338 IP, a league leading 230 ERA+ 3 Saves, and 3 SO in the Series. Yep. That'll do it for me.
2-Wagner: +14 rField, 32 doubles, 175 OPS+, 57 SB. Mongo like
3-Seymour: Best Season of His Career (BSOC). Led league in H,2b,3b,RBI,BA,SLG,OPS,OPS+ and TB. 21 SB.
4-Turkey Mike: 300 TB, 167 OPS+. Meh fielder. Scored 4 runs in the Series, which is one more than the A's did.
5-Rube: No series bonus for you. Come back one year.
6-Reulbach: 209 ERA+
7-Pete Hill: 388 OPS+ makes him the MMNLP (Can I say that or did I just inadvertently violate PC?)
8-Cy Young: League leading FiP, 147 ERA+, 2nd in K with 210. 320 IP...at age 38. Nice.
9-Roy Thomas: Walks, hits for average, steals the occasional base, good fielder (+8 rField)
10-Flick: AL leading 166 OPS+

Had he played more games, Chance would have easily made my ballot

Re Rube-I took a look at the MLE's in his HoM page and I'm not convinced. Dag has him 22-14 on the year and Chris Cobb sees him with a 99 OPS+ (He also thinks it should be subjected to a 5% upward adjustment. I just don't see 22-14 with a (Being generous here) 110 OPS+ as breaking the top ten. Since he could hit, I'd likely slot him in around 12th.